1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a mobile terminal, and particularly, to a method and mobile terminal for sending and receiving contents.
2. Description of the Related Art
Many service providers have provided users with various mobile communication services since the introduction of second generation communication technologies. The various communication services include an SMS (Short Message Service), and sending audio data, videos (moving images), electronic mail, and the like. The SMS is for transmitting a short text message via a mobile communication network. A technique for transmitting various contents by using the SMS has been known. Prior to describing such services, a configuration of the SMS will now be described with reference to accompanying drawings.
FIG. 1 is a configuration view that illustrates the configuration of the related art SMS system.
As illustrated, in general, the SMS system includes a mobile terminal (MS: mobile station) 101, a base station (BTS: Base Station Transceiver System) 102, an MSC/SGSN (Mobile Switching Center/Servicing GPRS Support Node) 103, an SMS-GMSC (SMS-Gateway Mobile Switching Center) 104, an HLR (Home Location Register) 105, and an SC (Service Center) 106. Accordingly, when the mobile terminal 101 sends a message, the message is transmitted to the service center 106 via the aforementioned parts and then is received by a mobile terminal at a receiving/reception side.
FIG. 2 is a schematic view that illustrates an SMS protocol stack according to the related art.
As illustrated, the protocol stack includes an application layer (AL), a transport layer (TL), a relay layer (RL), and a link layer (LL). Of these layers, the transport layer basically serves to configure a message upon receiving data from the application layer. Hereinafter, the following description will be made on the assumption that a message is transmitted from the mobile terminal (MS) to the service center (SC). When the mobile terminal sends a message, the message is transmitted to the service center (SC) via the aforementioned layers in the sequential order. Then, the service center (SC) transmits the received message to another mobile terminal, which is the destination. Here, the message passes through those layers in the reverse order. Description will now be made regarding the services that can be provided through such configuration.
It is known that text, data, bell sounds, voices, images, and the like can be transmitted by a method of transmitting various contents using the SMS service. However, in the related art, when transmitting through SMS, the contents should be transmitted such that an image is simply added to a text message or a text message is simply added to an image. Thus, because the type of images that can be transmitted is very limited, only simple images are commonly transmitted, and the contents of the message are also very limited. To solve such problems, an EMS (Enhanced Message Service) and an MMS (Multimedia Message Service) have been developed. Particularly, the EMS allows transmission of a plurality of SMS messages that are connected based on the existing SMS techniques, and some functions of the SMS are improved. Accordingly, the EMS (Enhanced Messaging Service) can be considered as an intermediate step between the SMS (Short Messaging Service) and the MMS (Multimedia Messaging Service).
Methods of transmitting contents using the EMS or MMS include a method of inserting images in some parts of a message in the form of “emoticons” (emotion icons). However, this method is merely a slight variation from the related art and has a problem in that the displayed icons are not interesting to the recipient because the displayed images are static and small in size. Also, a method of sending and receiving moving images (simple animation) by attaching them to a text message exists, but such is also problematic in that the images are in the form of icons, their displayed movement range is restricted, and the user may not be satisfied with the movements being displayed.